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Chapters (68)
  1. Title page
  2. Dedication
  3. Part I
  4. One
  5. Two
  6. Three
  7. Four
  8. Five
  9. Six
  10. Seven
  11. Eight
  12. Nine
  13. Ten
  14. Eleven
  15. Twelve
  16. Thirteen
  17. Fourteen
  18. Fifteen
  19. Sixteen
  20. Seventeen
  21. Eighteen
  22. Nineteen
  23. Twenty
  24. Twenty-one
  25. Twenty-two
  26. Twenty-three
  27. Twenty-four
  28. Twenty-five
  29. GAIA YOUNG. SUBJECTIVE IMPRESSIONS.MISSION DAY 20. 20:25 MT.
  30. Part II
  31. Twenty-six
  32. Twenty-seven
  33. Twenty-eight
  34. Twenty-nine
  35. Thirty
  36. Thirty-one
  37. Thirty-two
  38. Thirty-three
  39. Thirty-four
  40. Thirty-five
  41. Thirty-six
  42. Thirty-seven
  43. GAIA YOUNG. SUBJECTIVE IMPRESSIONS.MISSION DAY 22. 20:05 MT.
  44. Thirty-eight
  45. Thirty-nine
  46. Forty
  47. Forty-one
  48. GAIA YOUNG. SUBJECTIVE IMPRESSIONS.MISSION DAY 25. 15:30 MT.
  49. Forty-two
  50. Forty-three
  51. Forty-four
  52. Forty-five
  53. Forty-six
  54. Forty-seven
  55. Forty-eight
  56. Forty-nine
  57. Fifty
  58. Fifty-one
  59. Fifty-two
  60. Fifty-three
  61. Fifty-four
  62. Part III
  63. Fifty-five
  64. Fifty-six
  65. Fifty-seven
  66. Fifty-eight
  67. Also by Chris Beckett
  68. Copyright page

Then the picture changed and Gaia moved on, like what she’d just told us was nothing much at all. Like Gela’s ring was just some ordinary thing you saw every waking, and not the cause of fighting that had done for hundreds of people and was doing for even more right now, just across the Dark in Wide Forest. ‘And here’s another picture of Tommy,’ she said. ‘He’s meeting the Presid—’

But before she could even finish saying the word, Strongheart had stood up and started to bellow.

‘No more pictures! Do you hear me? Stop the pictures now.’

Forty

Not feeling like talking with her helpers or her guards, Mary had ridden out in front of them, and now she’d pretty much forgotten they were even there, plodding along behind her. She was struggling struggling inside herself as she turned the news from the Valley over and over in her mind. She was trying to figure out how to be happy about it, as she knew she should be, working with all the huge energy that she possessed to find a way of understanding it that wouldn’t mean throwing away everything she’d done in her life so far.

Could she really have been mistaken all that time, she wondered, when she thought she’d been listening to Gela? And if she’d been mistaken, then who had she been listening to? Whose voice had that been that seemed so strong and so clear? Yes, and why had the true Gela not reached out to her and put her straight, when Mary had always tried so hard to be true to her? It just didn’t make sense.

The cruel part was that, for all these years, making sense of things was what Mary had done for other people. All that time, she’d travelled back and forth across the Davidfolk Ground, from blueside to peckside, from rockside to alpside, giving up the chance of any sort of home of her own, any sort of family, so that she could tell people a story that would tie things together for them, giving meaning to their lives, however hard and sad, and give them a way to follow, like a string laid out through forest. So many times she’d helped people deal with grief and death and pain. So many times she’d gone down with them into their saddest and loneliest places, crying alongside them but then showing them a way to move forwards. Yet now she couldn’t do it for herself.